Five Feet Apart (2019)
Directed by Justin Baldoni
Seventeen-year-old Stella spends most of her time in the hospital as a cystic fibrosis patient. Her life is full of routines, boundaries and self-control — all of which get put to the test when she meets Will, an impossibly charming teen who has the same illness. There's an instant flirtation, though restrictions dictate that they must maintain a safe distance between them. As their connection intensifies, so does the temptation to throw the rules out the window and embrace that attraction.
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22 films that influenced Five Feet Apart
What critics say influenced Five Feet Apart
Yet another teen weepie in the vein of “The Fault in Our Stars” and its many imitators, “Five Feet Apart” is about two young cystic fibrosis patients who fall in love during hospitalization, even though their romance is stymied by the fact that the rules forbid them coming within six feet of one another because of the danger of potentially fatal cross-infection.
Given its premise (two teenagers dealing with a life-threatening condition fall in love), it's near-impossible and not at all unfair to compare Five Feet Apart to the YA hit The Fault in Our Stars.
Just as emotionally manipulative as fellow teen fare like A Walk To Remember and If I Stay, but less as effective as Me, Earl and the Dying Girl and The Fault in Our Stars, Five Feet Apart is typically schmaltzy and insultingly pedestrian, but, as cinematic history has demonstrated, deliver on exactly what you promise – which is often easier said than done when it comes to film – and you’re likely to end up with a product that’s remotely successful.
Noses blowing and heavy sobs will be heard around the world when Five Feet Apart releases this week, another entry into the odd little subgenre that is Romance Featuring One or More Terminally Ill Characters (whose most popular film is undoubtedly The Fault in Our Stars).
Sure, that nightmarish Paper Towns movie was a disaster, but The Fault in Our Stars practically defined an era.
There was of course "The Fault in Our Stars," "Everything, Everything" and "Midnight Sun" just in the past couple of years, all featuring a love story between two teenagers drawn together by their dire circumstances.
Clearly designed to replicate the weepie appeal that catapulted 2014’s teen cancer-romance The Fault in Our Stars to a $US307m take, Five Feet Apart is a very well-made heart-string tugger, blending the fast-talking, tech-savvy style of these new-century kids with the unapologetic old-school sentimentalism of 1970’s classic Love Story .
Si Love story en los años setenta fue acusada de lacrimógena, A dos metros de ti supera barreras en la materia doblando la apuesta médica y sin el freno autoimpuesto por Bajo la misma estrella, al menos por la versión cinematográfica, sin excesos sentimentales a pesar de la contundencia de su punto de partida.
Admittedly, it features two lead characters who suffer from a potentially fatal ailment that threatens to tear apart their blossoming romance, much like everything from Love Story to The Fault in Our Stars .
Director Justin Baldoni ( Jane the Virgin ) clearly has his heart in the right place and even has a few interesting ideas up his sleeve, but they mostly get overwhelmed by the shamelessly contrived prerogatives of the doomed-lovers movie category that first minted box-office gold with 1970’s Love Story .
Just as emotionally manipulative as fellow teen fare like A Walk To Remember and If I Stay , but less as effective as Me, Earl and the Dying Girl and The Fault in Our Stars , Five Feet Apart is typically schmaltzy and insultingly pedestrian, but, as cinematic history has demonstrated, deliver on exactly what you promise – which is often easier said than done when it comes to film – and you’re likely to end up with a product that’s remotely successful.
Almost as manipulative as “Everything, Everything,” or “A Walk to Remember,” less wrenching than “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” more medical than “The Fault in Our Stars,” almost as drawn-out as, oh, “Romeo and Juliet” — that’s “Five Feet Apart.”
With the premise being what it is, it should come as no surprise that Five Feet Apart aspires to be the kind of weepie teenage drama like A Walk to Remember, the kind of film that will be a formative experience for the right demographic due to exactly how many tears you shed in the third act.
None of these complaints were raised about Fault in Our Stars , or any other similarly themed dramas about teens in dire circumstances ( A Walk to Remember , The Spectacular Now , etc).
From A Walk to Remember to The Fault in Our Stars , the Sick Teen Movie has become a genre in and of itself.
Movies such as “A Walk to Remember” and “The Fault in Our Stars” are pop culture touchstones.
Almost as manipulative as “Everything, Everything,” or “A Walk to Remember,” less wrenching than “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” more medical than “The Fault in Our Stars,” almost as drawn-out as, oh, “Romeo and Juliet” — that’s “Five Feet Apart.”
The story is a take on “Romeo and Juliet,” featuring a pair of young, doomed, star-crossed lovers carrying on a forbidden romance.
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Aunque el hospital sea el escenario único y un grupo de chicos enfermos, los protagonistas, la película está lejos de las connotaciones de comedia dentro del evidente drama que aportaba la española Planta 4ª (2003), y en la primera mitad del relato los autores introducen un par de aspectos muy contemporáneos de evidente interés.
Tras haber visto las adaptaciones de novelas young adult como Bajo la misma estrella y Todo, todo , es el turno de adentrarnos en la adaptación del best seller Five Feet Apart , escrito por Rachael Lippincott con Mikki Daughtry y Tobias Iaconis, y convertida en la cinta A dos metros de ti .
Her compliance-based OCD is the reason Stella, whose name in no way resembles Bella from Twilight, is as healthy as she is.
Alas, screenwriters Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis are so fixated on increasing the dramatics, it makes cystic fibrosis to be a teen death sentence, like something out of Logan's Run.
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There was of course "The Fault in Our Stars," "Everything, Everything" and "Midnight Sun" just in the past couple of years, all featuring a love story between two teenagers drawn together by their dire circumstances.
And then Will (Cole Sprouse: TV’s Riverdale, The Master of Disguise) arrives.